Welcome to the first issue of “imantopia” - a monthly work in progress magazine enveloped in the invisible paper of an electronic letter where room by room we explore life as if it were a house. Hello world, hold my hand!

*articles featured in this edition:

• on reading hunger

• madame scarf

• annotate like artists

• my netflix

• notes on sweden

• bedroom journal entry

• the philosophy of the newsletter

• ode to the mokapot

• letters to the editor

library

ON READING HUNGER

The clock moving on a still wall, and pen on paper drawing up one sentence I write down every year. The desire to read more, and more. A sentence written down with fear, like a small animal in the forest preparing for a long winter. Every new year I tell myself that this is the time to read more. But why? And what is more? And when will it be ever enough? The new year often marks the self imposed reminder that one is doing well if one is reading plenty. But this is no cosmic truth, not a universal law and not a phenomenon of physics. And yet, ambitious Goodreads challenges are set. I write long long “books to be read” lists.

And coincidentally, so much talk about reading and performativity - which to me is nonsensical. Everything is performative in some sense or another, so why pick out reading as the vehicle for social critique? Eating can be performative, dancing can be performative. We work better in a cafe full of people, we study at the library. What is performance and what is life? We often act for others and for ourselves, but then what is performance for the first few minutes later becomes the Thing itself. Maybe I do read to feel like the ideal version of myself or to seem to others as such, but after one or two pages I have forgotten myself. The performance is over and life has begun. The two dance together, maybe there is never a clear distinction. It’s a tango scene where the dancers blend into one person. Maybe to grow up, to close the doors of childhood behind oneself is to step forward and open up the curtains of the theatre. Either way, I say let’s leave reading alone. Pirandello once said that “all life is a stage and a play” and whether entirely true or not, part of the absurdity of life is to sometimes observe oneself and be observed by others. Reading is no exception to the rule nor a purer problem of performance. Everything is performative, so nothing is. But this is not a library note on performance, I meant to write about reading hunger.

The act of writing down a list of books to read often feels like making a grocery list. Staring blankly at a bookshelf is like being met with the white light of a refrigerator. Reading hunger. Every January: “I want to read more”.

The past month I traveled to my hometown in Northern Italy, where I wandered through a bookstore as if it were a museum and saw each novel as a potential postcard to bring home. I came back to Stockholm and this January I read a few novels by Swedish authors translated in Italian. No recommendations in this issue, I didn’t like anything because you see - I am hungry but also picky. Hard to please. Weird tastebuds. I like books about nothing. I like food that is so plain one could taste the earth. I did, however, enjoy reading my “book-postcards” and playing with finding pieces to add to my library that could act as paintings of my world. Nordic authors, Italian publishing houses, seasonal picks for this mid-winter weather. My library becomes a museum of my past. But, this month I would read and I would still feel this stomach grumble - this voice telling me to that I need to read more.

It’s curious, I don’t think about reading titles I would enjoy more or that are more challenging or that tell me something special as I usually do the rest of the year - January is a time of greed. I just want to read more! What to do? I have been filling up my plate with appetizers as in literary magazines, because although with new years resolutions I feel this periodical and recurrent wave of reading greed I also do not automatically have more hours in a day. So, reading bites. The poetry foundation, the Paris review, the New York review of books, Granta - even Wikipedia articles about books and authors. Maybe this meta-reading about reading will be enough to survive the winter. Reading about reading to silence the hunger to read more. This will pass, it happens every new year. One must imagine Sysiphus happy - I must imagine myself reading. Maybe the hunger to read is a disguised hunger to understand the self, because reading allows one to be in conversation with the inner silence. Albert Camus in “The Minotaur” perfectly captures this feeling.

There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time.

Maybe the start of a new calendar cycle is a reminder that the self is a perishable good, that the days change, that fruit can ripen beyond sweetness. So, I seek to understand myself through reading more. I need to read more - translated, I need to speak to myself more. It’s winter, a natural canvas for solitude. Yet, we live in a digital decade where there are more voice notes from friends and more music albums and more podcast shows and more sound than ever. We have solitude that is never silent, never a solitude with the self. Silence is this oddity, this odd odd thing which is yet required for being with one self. We have new beginnings but no moments to be in conversation with the soul. All of this becomes reading hunger - the desire to be in silence, the desire to understand the self, the desire to be in solitude with the world, the desire to perform as the ideal, the desire to be seen by the page. Reading hunger is the animal consciousness telling me I am deficient in the things that make me a person. I have a self-deficiency. I lack nutrients, so everything simply becomes “I need to read more”. Reading hunger is a hunger for the self.

Usually the “library” category of this e-mail magazine is for reading reviews, but not for this first issue. This time around we begin with an empty stomach. Still, I would like to leave you a few suggestions on what to read when you feel a sudden urge to read more. My advice is do not go for longer works. No War and Peace-s. Seriously, no Tolstoys. Instead, fill your time with literary magazines or just magazines in general. Quicker to digest and easier to carry around, to snack on. Random wikipedia articles. Essays. Goodreads reviews. Screenplays of your favourite movies. The local newspaper. Or, if you want to be a bit more curated with your reading diet - books about reading.

• if on a winter’s night a traveler by Calvino - an experimental literary work on readership as ambivalent and solitary

• why read the classics by Calvino again - essays to ignite that reading hunger even more

• the diaries and notebooks of Susan Sontag are a reader’s treasure, filled with lists of book suggestions and literary thoughts

• short stories by Borges - an author but also! a librarian

• the idiot by Batuman - a stream of consciousness bildungsroman without pure plot that feels like reading thoughts about reading

This is all from my library. I hope to write the next issue sated and full from having read really, really good books.

wardrobe

MADAME SCARF

Now all seriousness aside, it’s time to discuss scarves. One scarf in particular. Madame scarf if you will! In my personal lynchian way that pairs the serious and the philosophical together with the aesthetically beautiful instead of the macabre with the normal, let me recalibrate the tone of this letter. Life is about this, facing escapism and reading hunger and new year desires - but also the happiness of finding one perfect scarf. And, I have found mine.

Stockholm in January is a snowy painting where snowstorms seem to work on a schedule. They always begin around a few hours after the sun has set at 3 pm and the large pearly white snowflakes fall gently on the icy streets until the next morning around 11 am. It’s been cold, and I am not one to wear a beanie or a hat or earmuffs because those objects I simply do not align with morally. I need my ears for listening to my jazz albums and anything too close to my head will ruin my hair. Moral misalignment.

I have realized that to survive this winter I could take inspiration from the elderly ladies of this Nordic country which have seen more winters than I ever have. All the old ladies are wearing big furs or a long coat, and one triangle shaped wool scarf tied under the chin in a loose knot. They look so beautiful, and I also want to be beautiful. So - I have found the perfect promise of warmth: a soft triangle scarf. After some research my pick was the Paloma Wool scarf called “PRIMA”.

The scarf is all pure brown wool and there is a dainty little embroidery stitched in one of the tree corners that says “PW”. Forget about balaclavas, forget about a world of hats that ruin the outfit. You can have it all, you can both be warm and elegant. I think of this as the winter edition of the ever so chic Audrey Hepburn scarf look. Inspiration was first taken from elegant elderly ladies, but upon second thought from Jackie Kennedy too. Important! The scarf must necessarily be tied under the chin, a little bow or a loose knot under the chin is what makes the look. No back of the head scarf tying allowed - that will result in a completely different look. Even better if paired with big 60s glasses and statement earrings. I feel like Anna Karenina whenever I step into the Swedish cold winter snowstorm with this look, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

office

ANNOTATE LIKE ARTISTS

Nothing to report from the digital sphere, not sure if I do love my ereader but still experimenting with my sony PRS-600. What I do have to report is my newfound love for chaotic journaling. The days of bullet journaling are long gone - the structured tables and the color coding of the 2010s journaling community are now a relic of the past. My inspiration for my use of pen and paper, but also for the digital images and the visuals that inspire the everyday use of my analog journaling ecosystem are - people! Architects, designers, directors, illustrators, engineers, painters, stylists, journalists. Imperfection, chaos, scribbles.

I stumbled upon this wonderful interview of Francis Coppola and the largeness, the comically large size of his overflowing ring binder in the video cover made me smile. In this interview Coppola explains how he created and used this “prompt book” - a bridge between the books by Puzo “The Godfather” and the screenplays he was creating to adapt those stories into the iconic movies that we all know today. I simply love how Coppola speaks, the cadence of his sentences. His glasses. The way his hands often anticipate what he means to say. I can see his terrible and charming handwriting. And the grain of this 2001 video is just like a teaspoon of sugar for my eyes. I love this video. Also, “The Godfather” is my all time favourite movie (I count all three as one long movie).

His use of this “prompt book” inspired me to think deeply about one of the journals that are part of my ecosystem. My jotter is where I write down everything reading and writing related. And I was thinking - to create a movie adapted from a book, requires maybe the highest, purest and most difficult reading of that story. The movie director must understand the book better than the writer himself to extract out of black words on white paper the moving world of image and sound. Not only must the director understand what is essential, what needs to make it into the movie or what must change for the story to translate into cinematic form what is meant within the novel. The director needs to show a story, but also the feeling that the reading of that book invokes. It’s a really complex job, perhaps more than creating a movie out of one’s own idea. So, I got really interested in his process for my own book and reading annotation workflow.

I have not yet really created a rhythm for it, but I think I am very close. Coppola says:

• it’s important to write down your impressions from the first reading = annotate the book as you read it moment to moment no back and forths

• imagine!! he used to go to a cafe with this large ring binder ad his Olivetti - do not be afraid of reading and annotating in public, at least you won’t make the noise of a typewriter

• he uses the margins of the book pages for his annotations = arrows and notes in the corners become a Renaissance decorated painting frame

• if you are not adapting the book into a movie (not making assumptions, you The Reader might be) then what is interesting here is that you create a roadmap of why and what you were left with from a story and i love a goodreads review or a friend that tells me why they loved or hated something - give me an argument!

• what is important to you and why in a sea of words is That important to you = this will tell you a lot about your world, not only the world of the book

• Francis uses “ruler lines vs squiggly lines”to show excitement - let your annotations show that as well (I like to annotate with lots of asterisks, mainly for passages I find beautiful)

• he uses black and red, a minimalist setup I will adopt = annotate then transfer into the jotter / reading journal for review yes, but also for better understanding of the book and myself through the book

• annotating a book is also a form of respect, a small gratitude prayer to the author. we are gifted with art and to be able to read it is nothing obvious. i read a book ad say thank you by talking to it.

I love learning from artists. Sometimes they do not create out of thin air. Art can also come from interpretation of already preexisting art. I will be journaling with pen and paper with this practice in mind.

catalog

MY NETFLIX

The cinema has not seen my face in a while, we’re not close friends anymore. She might not even recognize me if I go for a spontaneous visit sometime soon. It happens sometimes, our schedules don’t match or I simply start to not like to hear her voice. So, I have not been watching as many movies as I usually do both at home and at the theatre. Bad sign, it usually means my actual time management is off so that cinema titles slip away from my radar or that I am busy doing nothing and losing on the beauty of watching a really good movie. However, what I have been doing might be even a bit better. Before bed I have been loving what I call “My Netflix”.

Since I hate everything offered by the entertainment industry and at the same time I am in a lazy cinematic phase (maybe my attention span has shortened), what I have been doing instead of scrolling to no end or watching one too many YouTube vlogumentaries - is watching interviews. But not of any kind! I have been watching hours of Charlie Rose and Manufacturing Intellect interviews as if only minutes of the evening are passing by. Something about the aesthetic - the beautiful camcorder effect of the actual videos and the fuzzy microphone sound. Something about hearing the passion in the voices of actors, directors, writers. Something about the lessons that each interviews leave me with. I have been especially enjoying interviews with Coppola, Scorsese and Tarantino, those fellas. Reading about reading, interviews about film-making, I am in a russian doll phase.

Here are a few of my favourites:

A more modern rendition of Manufacturing Intellect is “Fashion Neurosis” on YouTube . Bella Freud does something similar to what Charlie Rose does - they let the speakers speak. It’s less an interview, and more intruding onto a conversation. Sitting next to someone and listening to two strangers discuss in a way that will change your life. I am no actress, but I love to listen to people and their love for their craft because it makes me love my own craft a bit more. They care so much it makes me want to care about what I do. It’s the best kind of bedtime watch.

windowsill

NOTES ON SWEDEN

Observations of the world:

What do we see from our window out into the world? Politically, bad news and although the news are seemingly always bad this time around they seem even worse than usual. Since this is the first issue, we will ease into things and keep it light. Let us close one eye. When the world seems as if it is about to explode, or there are sinister melodies creeping in like in a low budget badly produced student film - I try to absorb my immediate surroundings and remember that as big as the world can feel, I live in a small one. I read the local newspaper to stay informed, I go to my political science seminars - but I understand that politics cannot be all consuming. For this first issue, let’s focus on society. Politics and culture next time.

*Notes from people-watching in Sweden

• Parents here are very young, there are strollers everywhere and young dads wearing their toddlers’ microscopic blue Kanken backpacks as they go pick them up from daycare and moms are at most 25 years old (maybe it’s their parental benefit system)

• There are just way too many hair salons and tanning places and plastic surgery clinics open for business on the street = pressure to be beautiful? Maybe Sweden is the South Korea of Europe

• Everything is very much like a children’s story book - people dress like characters in a Moomin or Pippi illustration. Even Swedish itself as a language is so musical. Because accent / vowel intonation goes up and down within the word every sentence sounds like a nursery rhyme.

• Jay-walking is not common. Note to self: follow the rules! Big jaywalker here.

• The actual architecture and aesthetic of Stockholm as a city is so colourful - the most common color patterns of the houses are teal and red, green and orange, yellow and pink. A house is like a Rothko painting.

greenhouse

BEDROOM JOURNAL ENTRY

landline

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEWSLETTER

This is usually the magazine section reserved for literary work, philosophical or fictional. In this issue, however I would like to write about the newsletter. The philosophy of the newsletter if you will.

So, first as a preamble - this newsletter is on Buttondown and not on Substack because I do not believe that Substack is a newsletter platform anymore. It is not a negative space by any means. Substack is a wonderful platform for inspiration, for art, for creativity, for everything. And that’s my issue with it. Substack is everything! Substack is Pinterest meets Twitter. I used it a bit before notes where a thing, and then they took over with podcast options and livestreams and a million other features. It became a platform of short form inspiration. I miss it before notes were introduced, when it used to be a silent landscape of long form journalism - like an endless homemade magazine written by all kinds of people while now browsing through it feels more like window shopping at the mall. Do not get me wrong, again Substack is wonderful and I use it (sometimes)! But for a newsletter I prefer a less chaotic and simpler space, and a more direct relationship with the readership. This is why I chose Buttondown for “imantopia”. Practical explanation aside, let’s get to abstraction. What is a newsletter?

Periodically sent. E-newsletter. Interesting, I love a definition. Thank you, my beloved Wikipedia. It’s this periodically sent publication to a public. It’s a registered conversation in episodes. What is its purpose? To me it’s talking into the world about your world.

In this newsletter I hope to map out the Things and Thoughts of life, but because life is subjective and perspective is everything - then the world must be packaged so that one can look into a box from different angles to experience it differently each time. This is what a newsletter does, it gives one a perspective to borrow. When we read words our mind plays pretend as the writer, and then simultaneously one must remember that they stand outside of the box of perspective. Reading books, reading magazines, reading newsletters, looking at a poster, watching a movie - so much of art is about the borrowing of perspective. To me that’s the definition of the newsletter. It’s this game of whispering one would do at the library with a bookshelf in between you and the other person. But, in the newsletter the aspect of conversation is more pronounced. A newsletter is a conversation of borrowing perspective in episodes.

cupboard

ODE TO THE MOKAPOT

When I moved to Sweden, I immediately put in my suitcase my bialetti BRIKKA, my beloved mokapot. My beautiful daughter. What would I do without you? I would never go anywhere without it. I could write songs for her. Maybe I actually will write a poem about my mokapot.

This is no usual coffee maker. It’s the kind of mokapot that mimics espresso crema. Something about the engineering of its valve, I think. What I do know is that every coffee I make with this mokapot comes out perfect. Not watery, not too acidic nor bitter. Perfect. I had a brikka when I lived at home in Canada and I would always make my mom a cup too early in the morning before I left the house for university. She ended up loving it so much that I had to leave that one with her and bring a new one with me to Stockholm. The coffee is so strong that when you pour hot water over it or steamed milk, the americano or the latte remains coffee. I grew up in Italy so I am more than familiar with all regular mokapots - but this one is just so special. If you love espresso but don’t want to buy a traditional espresso machine, or like me you are traveling and want something small and portable, then the brikka mokapot would be a good choice for you. Just make sure the espresso you use is ground for stovetop espresso or mokapot and you are good to go. I personally use decaf lavazza. Nothing like a good cup of coffee in this winter weather.

mailbox

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

answer: hello and thank you! although I do love thinking about technology and the internet as a world, using it as a craft for digital creations is not my forte. I am no computer scientist but I do love thinking about technology in terms of philosophy and design! Especially, I really love the minimalist look of html as a coding language. To make 26082002.com and imantopia.com I used html only code just from learning how it works from a couple of books I found online and a few I checked out from my university library. imanbenerrabeh.com is my domain for Tumblr so no coding there. This is a hobby for me, so doing it for myself but without the goal of perfection. Learning Html is one of my side quests.

answer: hi there! I also had a few questions about how to decide if a master’s is for you, so why not talk about it here too. How does one decide if a master’s or a phd or “a big next step” is the right decision? I decided to do my master’s because it aligns with my career goals but also because it’s a chance for me to grow as a person. I wanted growth, so I moved far away from home in a country I don’t speak the language in. I saw it as an exercise of exposure and a chance for learning in newness. Maybe I will do a phd, I can’t say for sure now but if in a few years I feel like it will be a good environment for growth then that maybe might become a yes. I think of myself as a plant. I need soil, fertilizer, sun, rain - biodiversity. If my gut instinct, paired with an actual reasoning process, tells me the “big next step” is not biodiverse enough I then create an atmosphere for growth where I am. It all depends on your vision, where do you want to go? Postgraduate education is like taking a train somewhere, where you get off depends on your destination.

answer:

• read more, annotated

• spend time with the elderly in my family

• long phone calls / voice notes

• find new signatures (hair, perfume, style, etc)

• learn how to use technology for art or archiving

• write honestly and find my craft format

• be forgiving

• no nail biting or skin picking

• journal in my native language

• let go of routines

• stop looking at the time so much

• more biking and walking in silence

• practice over perfection

///

That’s all for the this issue of imantopia. The monthly editions of this magazine are part of the free public newsletter, while the paid subscription will include weekly letter-publications on miscellaneous themes.

If you would like to reply to this letter magazine, your e-mail will go directly to my inbox. No third party system, this is a true correspondence! Feel free to also send me a message on my blog (https://imanbenerrabeh.com). It would be a pleasure to receive your mail. Thank you for reading!

Sincerely,

Iman :-)

*previously aired on my televison broadcast:

imantopia.com

January 2026 / Stockholm

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